Recently, with improvements in communication environments and advances in information communication techniques, information providing services and information using services which use computer networks such as the Internet can be provided. In multimedia environments in which all data, e.g., text data, image data, and sound data, are digitized, in particular, since information can be shared and provided, many information providing services have been offered through the Internet.
Creating the image input by a digital camera or scanner as electronic data and storing the data in a recording medium such as an HDD, CD-R, or the like of a personal computer have already become general operations.
As described above, with rapid improvements in Internet connection environments (improvements in communication environment and the function of connection devices and reductions in cost), there have appeared application service providers (to be referred to as photosites hereinafter) which provide services like keeping the image data photographed by users using image input devices in storage areas in servers on the Internet and allowing the users to browse the image data again at the time they require it or processing the image data, and print service providers (to be referred to as printsites hereinafter) which provide services of printing electronic documents such as the New Year's cards, wordprocessed documents, and images.
At the beginning, many of photosites were run by the profits accrued from print services ordered to printsites annexed to the photosites while keeping image data from users free. Recently, however, since it takes an enormous cost to maintain and manage image data, photosites and printsites have become separated from each other. More specifically, photosites that require much cost are managed by makers of image input devices such as digital cameras, whereas printsites are managed by specialized companies.
As described above, since considerable expenditures are required to manage photosites, when a maker of image input devices manages such a photosite, the maker wants to avoid bearing the expenses for the management of image data input by image input devices manufactured by other makers.
When the image data photographed by an image input device, especially a digital camera, is to be printed at a printsite, the photographing condition data embedded in the image data at the time of photographing is often used to obtain a high-quality output. In some cases, therefore, image data containing no photographing condition data cannot be properly printed. For this reason, at a photosite, in accepting the upload (transfer) of image data from users, it is necessary to suppress the upload of image data containing no photographing condition data and limit the use of the site to only images that can be properly printed.